envelope A+D gets a lot of requests for shipping container design due to our wildly successful project PROXY in San Francisco. This project, a temporary coffee bar for a large tech company in Mountain View, started as one such inquiry. The client wanted the outdoor cafe to be inexpensive and quickly deployable. While a shipping container was suitable theoretically, onerous permitting restrictions pushed us to devise a different solution: the _dock.

The _dock is a food+drink pavilion composed of sets of tubes and screens. The pavilion is activated by any food truck that docks, creating virtually limitless programming possibilities.

A light blue ground graphic creates an intuitive queueing system while simultaneously defining the exterior space. The pavers were flipped over and the underside was painted to allow for an easy eventual dissolution of the space.

Though _dock is currently a one-off installation, we designed it with a series of pavilions in mind that would share a formal language but wouldn’t formally be the same. The pavilion’s easily adaptable nature and cost-effectiveness add up to a prudent system for providing places of rest and refuge amidst the hustle and bustle of the company’s campus.